Microsoft releasing Temple Run and five more games today for Windows Phone 8 [Updated]

Subway Surfers doesn’t look to be coming to Windows Phone anytime soon (the teaser image was just a hoax), but worry not. Windows Phone 8 will soon have a 3D endless runner to its name. Speaking of names, that runner is none other than the original game that started the genre craze: Temple Run from Imangi Studios! We knew it was coming, but this is the first time we’ve actually played the port for ourselves.

Not only that, but in celebration of GDC week, Microsoft is releasing a number of indie games for Windows Phone 8 today. Read on for actual Windows Phone screenshots, video demo and quick impressions!

Temple Run

First, the bad news: Temple Run will not be an Xbox Live title. That’s right, one of the most popular mobile games around, which Microsoft specifically had a hand in bringing to Windows Phone, will not bear the coveted Xbox name. Somebody should write an editorial about that.

Still, a lot of guys, gals, and people of indiscriminate gender just want to play Temple Run on their Windows Phones. They should be able to do that very soon, as the game seems to be pretty much done. The goal is to help a hapless explorer run as far through a danger-filled temple as he collects coins and dodges obstacles.

The controls are simple: tilt left and right to move along the path, swipe left or right to make 90-degree turns, swipe up to jump, and swipe down to slide. If you’ve played The Gunstringer: Dead Man Running or similar games, then you already know the drill. The input here is extremely natural, surely one of the factors behind the game’s success.

The Windows Phone 8 port does look a bit dated graphically – certainly no more advanced than what Windows Phone 7 can accomplish. But once the first game comes along and does well, that certainly paves the way for the sequel. We don’t have pricing info yet, but hopefully it will be free and supported by in-app purchases.

6th Planet

This game is a unique combination of digital comic with actual gameplay interspersed between the story sequences. It plays a lot like an advanced version of Lunar Lander. 6th Planet costs 99 cents and you can get it here.

Official description:

“6th Planet tells the story of a near future, where the planet Saturn suddenly changes into a possible place for humans to live. To find out what is going on, a monkey is sent into space. This is the beginning of a series of events that will determine mankind’s future.

The goal of the game is to guide your space pod to the landing site on the other side of the level. With only two buttons to work with, it is a simple concept that’s easy to pick up, but hard to master. The Story Mode contains 50 levels, divided across 7 worlds. This stands for at least four hours of gameplay. If you succeed in finishing this mode, you unlock the Master levels, which is a collection of very challenging levels for you to try out. This mode will be updated in the future with more content.

The comic story, in between the levels, consists of a total of 188 screens, which is two comic books worth of images. The story is co-written and drawn by the studio that’s responsible for the Oscar nominated animation films The Triplets of Belleville and The Secret of Kells. Screens are colored by Raymund Lee, famous for his work on Marvel’s Wolverine series.”

Fling Theory

A unique game in which players help a little red creature navigate dangerous obstacles within a scientist’s lab. The graphics are cel-shaded and create a great sense of depth when seen in motion. To move the creature around, you pull it back like a slingshot. It’s a cool marriage of physics-puzzle style controls with an actual traditional game structure. Get the Windows Phone 8 version for free here.The Windows 8 version costs $2.99 - get it here.

Official description:

"In Fling Theory, players solve physics-based puzzles by manipulating atoms and destroying obstacles. Your weapon? Electrons! Play through hours of gravity -- and mind-bending levels. Imagine Angry Birds Space where you have to actually think about what you're doing -- that's Fling Theory in a nutshell.

The game starts by giving you negative electrons and introducing the concept of repulsion. Soon we introduce the ability to manipulate the charge of atoms by hitting them, switching your polarity to launch positrons, and damaging obstacles to progress. Once those basics are taught, we ramp up the difficulty.

On the fence? You can actually PLAY a demo of Fling Theory right now! Head over to http://www.flingtheory.com/playnow.html and let us know what you think! The full version contains crazier levels, over 25 of them!"

Orcs Must Survive

A charming tower defense spin on the console and PC Orcs Must Die series. The spin is that players control the evil orcs and must fend off pesky do-gooding humans. I could do without the black borders (not present on iOS), but otherwise it's quite lovely. The Windows Phone game costs 99 cents and you can get it here. The Windows 8 version costs $2.99 - get it here.

Official description:

“A black-hearted King punishes the brave Orcs, the only ones in the kingdom with joy in their hearts. Join the Orcs in their battle against the royal troops to regain the happiness that was stolen by the King’s evil spell. A strategy game that brings to life the strength of these fantastic characters from the medieval era.
Advance through the various levels, gaining more troops and weapons to fight the knights, wizards and ghosts of the King.
Will the Orcs survive?”

Propel Man

Another physics-puzzle-ish game in which you launch a guy out of a catapult. Then you’ll have to help him land safely by opening his parachute in time. I’m not digging the controls in this one, but I still need to play it more. Propel Man costs 99 cents and you can get it here.

Official description:

"PROPEL MAN LOVES TO FLY, COME JOIN THE FUN!
Use the Catapult to dispatch the Propel Man to dizzy heights in the sky and cross each level by landing safely past the finish line by deploying your parachute.

Ruzzle

A Boggle-style word game with online multiplayer. Think of it as a 1- or 2-player version of Wordament. Ruzzle features Facebook integration, a single-player Practice Mode, and support for numerous languages, so it should do pretty well. It's also coming to Windows 8 - hopefully both versions can play against each other. It's listed for $2.99 and can be downloaded here.

Official description:

“Ruzzle is a fun and fast-paced word game where you can challenge your friends or allow an opponent to be chosen randomly. Who can find the most words in two minutes?

Find as many words as possible on a board by swiping your finger across the screen. The letters may form words as long as they are connected to each other. Nice audio and animations make it even more fun to play.

The matches are played in three rounds and the highest total number of scores wins.
The rounds can be played when it suits you. You can get going as soon as you have two minutes to spare!

Letter scores, word length and bonus pieces help you to collect as many scores as possible.
If you would like to practice offline, you can play matches in the premium version.”

Lots to look forward to

Clearly Windows Phone 8’s support for Native code and multiplatform game engines like Unity is starting to allow for a lot more games to come over. In-app purchases are another feature of the new OS and will be featured in some of the games above. We don’t have release dates yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as these titles become available!

Update: All but two of the games are available in the WP Store! We'll continue adding their links to this story as they come.

Microsoft releasing Temple Run and five more games today for Windows Phone 8 [Updated]

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That's a rather-large load of crap. For starters, this is an article about Temple Run. Temple Run doesn't really have a social aspect to it. You don't play online, though it might have leaderboards (never played it, so IDK). You're not going to get ostracized by friends because you don't have it.

As for ACTUALY social things, we're only missing Instagram. That doesn't really offer much but sharing pictures, a feature that sits in the more-popular Facebook. Since I've never heard of a person being on Instagram, but not Facebook, I would argue that not having Instagram is a negligible problem for users. What you do with Instagram, you can do on Facebook, and it will reach MORE of your friends.

The social aspect of games comes more from multiplayer. When we're talking of games without it, you're not missing out on social interaction. Even if you were, that affects teenagers. I'm fairly certain that almost no adults get together to play games on their phones, nor do you miss out on making friends because your phone lacks Temple Run and Instagram.

You are right that there is an impact on the market because of the fewer features on the devices, but people don't really make friends based on their phones, so the problems are more about convenience, rather than some great, social injustice.

other os's did'nt get all the apps in a year a two....windows has just took off...n with this speed it wont be long before we catch up...i dont own a windows phone now but i check updates about it every day...nd m sure my next phone will be a windows phone...

That actually would be a great promo. Actually, it would be better to do a 4GB Xbox for every Windows Phone sold, on- or off-contract. That, or do a Windows Phone with a Windows 8 machine during the Back to School sales they tend to have each fall.

This may sound as weird as your whining, but I for one would LOVE to see people like you run to ios or whatever will make you cry a little less.
You are bad for the platform dude... yeah you bought a device, cool great. But the constant pointless complaining is detrimental. Mainly because people waffling on what to do next focus more on complaints than compliments. And if you are willing to step back and look at it, your issues (stated here) are worthless.

Come on Microsoft smh, I mean I'm glad that temple run is coming out for wp8 but you have to stop giving us these old ass games. Use your 50 million Xbox users and make them want to switch to a windows phone, doing something like you did with skulls of shogun and do it with halo, gears and ect.. Now I understand why users won't switch to a windows phone, no apps and when we do get the popular apps people don't care anymore... I still love my Nokia Lumia 920 is a great phone but the lack of games/app is ridiculous.

They are not random games. Also, the past few weeks LIVE titles have been released and it appears the drought has stopped. If you want a LIVE title, buy the games released today. Just like consoles LIVE titles are only released 1-2 per week. This won't change for WP. I am critical of WP and the other OS's for the things they lack, but people are just being silly in regards to these indie titles.

Exactly. I suppose I should not be surprised at some of the comments. An article that features some new games for the OS is a positive, but you wouldn't think that after reading some of the comments. Just silly. The past few weeks have been great in the way of applications and games.
Unfortunately this same behavior occurs on other forums for the other OS's as well.

All will come one day. People see the vibe of a windows phone user. We are geeks kids students business people and or someone who is different. WP just challenges the development process that must be different from other platforms, just my thought. Like Pandora, we all crapped on them and guess what they are here. Glad to see any app come but I would like the to be included to get an app like other platforms and included in the updates. Go Microsoft!

Yeah, I downloaded the title to both of the Gravity Guy games (never tried them). Since I have $7 or so on my Microsoft account to spend, I might grab one of those and Plants vs. Zombies, while it is on-sale.

Engadget has this article as well. They are stating the price for Temple Run is slated at $0.99. "We've confirmed that the 99-cent title is in fact the original version, with no official word on when or if the sequel will land in the Windows Phone Store."

I'll be passing then. I would pay $0.99 if it was Xbox LIVE-enabled, but to pay for what is simply a port that is free elsewhere? I'll pass. To pay for a game that is free elsewhere, I want something added to make it worth the price.

Except it looks like we are getting the exact same game as iOS, but we have to pay for it. We DO know that Xbox LIVE functionality's not added, the article says it. So, without Xbox LIVE built into the game, I won't be paying for it.

WP’s owners aren’t just missing out on apps, they’re also excluded from cultural relevance. Popular apps like Temple Run and Instagram are a shared experience that bring friends and strangers together.
Considering that a smartphone is a social and technological tool, missing out on social and technology trends kind of defeats the whole point.

This will likely fall on deaf ears but please stop posting the same thing multiple times. So far 3 posts in this thread stating you're going to sell your phone or referring to it as a paperweight because of this and 2 posts which are identical about cultural relevance. We get it... you're pissed off. Repeat posting however does nothing for your cause. It doesn't make your opinion any more relavant or persuasive. It's annoying and childish but maybe that's what you're going for.

Windowsphone.com needs something where they (Ppl who develop apps, I guess) post popular apps on the website and there's like a button (like the FB like button) for WP users can press to know that it's an app we all would want and that it should be dev'd or ported. I've tweeted it to J. Belfiore (it's hard to explain this with a small amount of characters) so, if you agree, you can tweet him that as best as you can. IDC about if I came up w/ the idea and you suggesting it. This is for All WP users.

If TR2 is released not to far ahead, TR fans will have both games. I personally hate when there is a 2'nd or 3'rd instalment but not the previous versions. It makes the marketplace more complete. So there you have my 2 cents.

I'm only downloading these popular apps like Pandora just to see what the hype is all about. I will also download instagram whenever it comes out. Will play with it and uninstall when done. The integrated fb on WP is enough for me. Its all I ever use to share pics.

Wowwwww what a news, my nephews and nieces always taunt me that I don't have temple run. Those kids always want to grab my phone as well so that all of them can play at once. They would be the most happy kids once they would see TR on my phone.

I JUST BOUGHT PLANTS V ZOMBIEZ IN THE US REGION AND WHAT HAPPENS IS THAT IF U BUY SOMETHING VIA PAYPAL ACCOUNT IT AUTOMATICLY TAKE PAYMENT FROM THE CREDIT CARD I REGISTERED WITH MY PAYPAL ACCOUNT AND THANX A MILLION . YOU HELPED ME :)))))